How can I change an objects scale, and rotation using an Empty?
One way I found that gets a similar effect, is using hair particles to emit triangles:


Add a sphere as an emitter mesh:

Add a plane and merge (AltM) two vertices to create a single tri:

Set the Particle settings for the sphere to hair, select the tri as object in Particle settings > Render, disable Emitter so the emitter mesh is not rendered, and enable Rotation in Render.

Now rotating the tri causes the particles to rotate as well:

Force fields will also effect the hair particles, so you can get effects with them too.


Duplifaces

This can also be achieved with duplifaces:  


Parent the tri to an icosphere
Select the sphere, and enable Duplifaces in Properties > Object panel > Duplication > Faces
(Optional) Enable Scale and tweak scale settings.
You can apply the dupli objects with Ctrl+Shift+A (With the sphere selected)
Add a constraint to one of the now separate triangle objects (you might want to make these a Group with Ctrl+G so you can select them all easily with Shift+G > Group)
You can then constrain each tri individually, select them all with the constrained tri active (yellow) and object > constraints > copy constraints to selected objects:


  

Note that with Duplifaces the trick of rotating the original tri still works, but force fields do not.